shake it out
by paradises
Summary: It's eighth grade and Rachel Berry is always right; if you're a part of something special, it makes you special — or, the story of how longing to be the best never really works in the end. / ClaireMassie friendship


**so, this is just something random that i've thought of and is more of something that i've developed as a parallel between emily&ali, and i'm not really sure who would be emily and ali in the clique fandom, but for canon characters, claire seems the most emily, and yeah; hope you like this, :) it's pretty short, but it's something that i wrote in less than thirty minutes and isn't beta-read (written in the middle of the night), so i'm apologizing in advance for burning all of your eyes.**

**shake it out**

There's only one person who's ever been able to make her feel special — and, unfortunately, it's the one person who actually can make Claire's life a living hell if she's in a bad mood, or make her life a fairytale, but Claire would always be the lady in waiting, Massie the princess, if she was floating on air, her eyes sparkling underneath the fluorescent lights, harsh and raw on their pale skin.

When they first met, all the way back in seventh grade, it was though everything depended on the volatile mood of Octavian Country Day's little thirteen year old queen, and Claire learned soon enough that for most of the times, Massie wouldn't choose to be a benevolent ruler.

On the contrary, it seemed as though she took pleasure in giving other people pain, but it didn't stop Claire from wanting her — from wanting the entire Pretty Committee; to like her, to honestly like her not because of the certain name brand shoes that she would wear one day or a pair of earrings that she had stolen from the mall on a wild dare, even though she could probably afford them without having to steal, but because deep down, Claire could see the honest friendships that had formed since the fourth grade, the supposed starting date of the school's reigning clique, and they were everlasting.

It wasn't superficial; throughout middle school, there were the ups and downs of life, but it was real, and Claire wanted to be a part of it. It's eighth grade and Rachel Berry is always right; if you're a part of something special, it makes you special.

.

She's already in the ninth grade, the third week and the fourth day, a Thursday to be precise, when she's happiest.

Most of the dramatics haven't started yet though they're quite a few breakups, none that Claire would be included in of course, and at least three girls throughout the school have already been asked to homecoming in extremely dramatic ways, including a pony with several ribbons, spray paint, and the classic rose and half the school leading behind this boy to ask this one girl out, who was a grade below him — who ended up saying no.

Claire had been there to see the crestfallen look on the boy's face, and realized that it wasn't really worth it to build up hope, when failure and rejection were all that were going to come out of the end. She swore that day, that she would never ever fall in love, because it was stupid and would get her nowhere.

The rest of the so called everlasting friendship bonds between the Pretty Committee have been broken for the most part and it seems as though Dylan's mother and her two older sisters, Ryan and Jamie were their names, right?, have moved somewhere else — where the grass is always greener on their side, and Kristen's always involved in either soccer or her new boyfriend, something that apparently looks good on college applications, but she's not exactly as obsessive as some of Claire's other friends, perhaps not having the same kind of pressure. Claire, Alicia, and Massie are all that's really left, and the worst part about having a group of three is the fact that the majority of school projects and teams in soccer, partners in well, anything, involve teams of two — and the team of two would always be Alicia and Massie. Every single time.

Having not been one of the more popular kids — the real ones, at least; Claire had based all of her knowledge on things like falling in love and having a perfect life from television. It seemed as though if a girl fell in love in her first week of high school, all would come to ruin and before she knew it, the peak of her life would be homecoming and the day after, she would end up at a drugstore with her devastated parents and a pregnancy test.

She would keep the baby, and her entire life, the whole future that her parents had planned for her, including visits to the Ivy Colleges that she would soon be applying to, if soon could qualify as three to four years down the road, was destroyed. Gone, just like that.

Or, that could just be Claire being slightly overdramatic, but it wasn't her fault that most of her great life advice came from television shows like _Dance Academy _or _The Vampire Diaries _or even _Camp _— but it had taught her that if she ever fell in love with a vampire, don't fall in love with his brother because that will just lead to a lot of other complications, but that's even the point. Or is it?

Nevertheless, somehow it turns out that the Blocks won't let Massie continue with the regular regime of spending around four thousand dollars every week on after school shopping trips unless Claire comes along, but that was back in seventh grade; and for Massie to continue, her grades have to go up.

Her parents are the slightest bit more carefree than the Lyons though Massie is, in fact, the only child and therefore the heiress to all of the riches of the Blocks, and all Massie wants to be is a fashion designer — Claire tries to instill in Massie's head that the only way that she'll be successful in life is to go to one of the Ivy leagues and either be an lawyer for celebrities, become a medical profession of R.O.A.D., involving the fields of radiology, ophthalmology, anesthesiology, and dermatology, which pay the most for medical professions, in general, or become a vice president or CEO of a major company.

It's the only way that Claire's aware of, and she'll stick with her beliefs until the end.

So, it makes natural sense for somebody like a tutor to come help her, but her parents were thinking something that would look good on her college resume: something like four years of math team in Briarwood Octavian Day High School, whose math team had been going down to state for at least the past eight years, which was exactly when the school was finally built and more students started flooding in from each individual middle school.

Claire's walking through the hallways with Meena; They're coming out of the gym room — all hot and sweaty, and all Claire can think about is how she wishes that Massie would have been in her gym class hour, in her soccer team because the rest of the girls were popular, more popular than she would ever be, and found it easy to be themselves and speak up for themselves, as though they had been raised to act in such ways. Claire had never really gotten the hang of making friends. one of her friends from Layne; who keeps on incessantly talking about the promises of college and how her older brother is going to be going to John Hopkins' for his fellowship, and then Massie comes along, and tells Meena to stop being such an incessant bitch. It immediately shuts her up, and Massie drags on Claire's arm, pulling her through the hallways into the math team room, which is extremely crowded.

If Claire had turned around before ditching one of her true friends, Meena, she might have seen the crestfallen look on her face — something that had been on her own face several times in middle school, with the look of desperation and longing for friends, for somebody to like her, and the hope that it would come.

There are way too many students in the room — she calculates them, and averages the number to be around sixty, and laughs a little to herself, knowing that there would be no way that Massie would be able to make it down to state, and that Claire, who had won second place in the National Science Fair every year since sixth grade, would have a much greater chance.

Nevertheless, it seems as though Massie actually understands most of the math that they're learning in their Freshmen H Accelerated Math class, including all of the similitude and the isometries, and refers to her knowledge as her "secret smarts".

Claire's the second one to know about her "secret smarts" right after Alicia — who's always going to be the best friend. Most of the times, Claire can't help but feel envious and jealous of Alicia for being the more fun one to be around, for the being the prettier one. Nevertheless, Alicia's not here right now, so that doesn't even matter. The two of them sit down next to each other in the orange tan desks in the front of the room, front and center.

There are two boys diagonal to the seats behind them — one of them is Josh Hotz, some random transfer student with a cute accent, but is just insignificant and has the IQ of a squirrel, while the other one, Derrick Harrington is one of the cutest boys that Claire has ever laid eyes on.

And, of course, she's the only one that knows about her own crush on Derrick, who probably is too cute and too smart to ever associate with a person such as Claire, but they've talked several times throughout middle school, but now it's high school and he hasn't even talked to her one time unless it was for a school project — _not one freaking time. _It gives her reason to stress about the fact that her so called love life is slipping out of her hands before it even begins.

Massie raises her hand for the correct answer, and out of the corner of her eye, Claire sees Derrick staring at Massie, a look of admiration on his face, but he quickly turns away before any of his friends could interpret admiration for "whipped". Claire's the only one that notices.

She wishes that she hadn't seen. Nevertheless, it leads her to realize that Massie's always going to be the prettier one — the one that all of the boys chase after, teasing and calling, while admiring all the same, the one that can make friends with the snap of her fingers, the one that's mommy's and daddy's little angel, the perfect girl that every other one at the high school wants to be, even the upperclassmen.

(But, Massie's the devil in disguise.)

.

A horde of accumulated graduates disperse in broad daylight, drunkly enunciating their newfound statuses to anybody who will bother to listen, though most of the times, strangers upon the street, with this ecstasy in their footsteps as they wander into the new world. A sleek Mercedes speeds, jerking upon neon speed bumps, sending a crude reminder to the car's passengers that though they are high school graduates, they are still under the jurisdictions of the driving law's strange signs.

Four girls sit in the back seats, each retrospectively reminiscing on everything they had just left behind but none of them spend too long upon the dreadful days left behind, as their dancing days are flying into visibility, complete with the shows of traditionally themed fireworks, bouquets of flowers from not-so-secret secret admirers, and of course, the speaking navigational system with the _hot _British accent.

It's the end of high school — and it's ALL A LIE; because, darling, these years? They were never truly the time of our lives.

.

please leave any comments, below!


End file.
